Section 5. Concluding Estimate

The reader will expect me, after having given some account of the estimates of others, to make an evaluation of my own. Of course no view can be final; mine, like that of everyone else, is the expression of an age and an environment as well as that of an individual.

The Reformation, like the Renaissance and the sixteenth-century Social Revolution, was but the consequence of the operation of antecedent changes in environment and habit, intellectual and economic. There was the widening and deepening of knowledge, due in one aspect to the invention of printing, in the other to the geographical and historical discoveries of the fifteenth century and the consequent adumbration of the idea of natural law. Even in the later schoolmen, like Biel and Occam, still more in the humanists, one finds a much stronger rationalism than in the representative thinkers of the Middle Ages. The general economic antecedent was the growth in wealth and the change in the system of production from gild and barter to that of money and wages. This produced three secondary results, which in turn operated as causes: the rise of the moneyed class, individualism, and nationalism.

All these tendencies, operating in three fields, the religious, the political and the intellectual, produced the Reformation and its sisters, the Renaissance and the Social Revolution of the sixteenth century. The Reformation--including in that term both the Protestant movement and the Catholic reaction--partly occupied {744} all these fields, but did not monopolize any of them. There were some religious, or anti-religious, movements outside the Reformation, and the Lutheran impulse swept into its own domain large tracts of the intellectual and political fields, primarily occupied by Renaissance and Revolution.

(1) The gene felt by many secular historians in the treatment of religion is now giving way to the double conviction of the importance of the subject and of its susceptibility to scientific study. Religion in human life is not a subject apart, nor is it necessary to regard all theological revolts as obscurantist. As a rationalist has remarked, it is usually priests who have freed mankind from taboos and superstitions. Indeed, in a religious age, no effective attack on the existing church is possible save one inspired by piety.

Many instructive parallels to the Reformation can be found both in Christian history and in that of other religions; they all markedly show the same consequences of the same causes. The publication of Christianity, with its propaganda of monotheism against the Roman world and its accentuation of faith against the ceremonialism of the Jewish church, resembled that of Luther's "gospel." Marcion with his message of Pauline faith and his criticism of the Bible, was a second-century Reformer. The iconoclasm and nationalism of the Emperor Leo furnish striking similarities to the Protestant Revolt. The movements started by the medieval mystics and still more by the heretics Wyclif and Huss, rehearsed the religious drama of the sixteenth century. Many revivals in the Protestant church, such as Methodism, were, like the original movement, returns to personal piety and biblicism. The Old Catholic schism in its repudiation of the papal supremacy, and even Modernism, notwithstanding its {745} disclaimers, are animated in part by the same motives as those inspiring the Reformers. In Judaism the Sadducees, in their bibliolatry and in their opposition to the traditions dear to the Pharisees, were Protestants; a later counterpart of the same thing is found in the reform the Karaites by Anan ben David. Mohammed has been a favorite subject for comparison with Luther by the Catholics, but in truth, in no disparaging sense, the proclamation of Islam, with its monotheism, emphasis on faith and predestination, was very like the Reformation, and so were several later reforms within Mohammedanism, including two in the sixteenth century. Many parallels could doubtless be adduced from the heathen religions, perhaps the most striking is the foundation of Sikhism by Luther's contemporary Nanak, who preached monotheism and revolted from the ancient ceremonial and hierarchy of caste.

What is the etiology of religious revolution? The principal law governing it is that any marked change either in scientific knowledge or in ethical feeling necessitates a corresponding alteration in the faith. All the great religious innovations of Luther and his followers can be explained as an attempt to readjust faith to the new culture, partly intellectual, partly social, that had gradually developed during the later Middle Ages.

The first shift, and the most important, was that from salvation by works to salvation by faith only. The Catholic dogma is that salvation is dependent on certain sacraments, grace being bestowed automatically (ex opere operato) on all who participate in the celebration of the rite without actively opposing its effect. Luther not only reduced the number of sacraments but he entirely changed their character. Not they, but the faith of the participant mattered, and {746} this faith was bestowed freely by God, or not at all. In this innovation one primary cause was the individualism of the age; the sense of the worth of the soul or, if one pleases, of the ego. This did not mean subjectivism, or religious autonomy, for the Reformers held passionately to an ideal of objective truth, but it did mean that every soul had the right to make its personal account with God, without mediation of priest or sacrament. Another element in this new dogma was the simpler, and yet more profound, psychology of the new age. The shift of emphasis from the outer to the inner is traceable from the earliest age to the present, from the time when Homer delighted to tell of the good blows struck in fight to the time when fiction is but the story of an inner, spiritual struggle. The Reformation was one phase in this long process from the external to the internal. The debit and credit balance of outward work and merit was done away, and for it was substituted the nobler, or at least more spiritual and less mechanical, idea of disinterested morality and unconditioned salvation. The God of Calvin may have been a tyrant, but he was not corruptible by bribes.

We are so much accustomed to think of dogma as the esse of religion that it is hard for us to do justice to the importance of this change. Really, it is not dogma so much as rite and custom that is fundamental. The sacramental habit of mind was common to medieval Christianity and to most primitive religions. For the first time Luther substituted for the sacramental habit, or attitude, its antithesis, an almost purely ethical criterion of faith. The transcendental philosophy and the categorical imperative lay implicit in the famous sola fide.

The second great change made by Protestantism was more intellectual, that from a pluralistic to a monistic {747} standpoint. Far from the conception of natural law, the early Protestants did little or nothing to rationalize, or explain away, the creeds of the Catholics, but they had arrived at a sufficiently monistic philosophy to find scandal in the worship of the saints, with its attendant train of daily and trivial miracles. To sweep away the vast hierarchy of angels and canonized persons that made Catholicism quasi-polytheistic, and to preach pure monotheism was in the spirit of the time and is a phenomenon for which many parallels can be found. Instructive is the analogy of the contemporary trend to absolutism; neither God nor king any longer needed intermediaries.

(2) In two aspects the Reformation was the religious expression of the current political and economic change. In the first place it reflected and reacted upon the growing national self-consciousness, particularly of the Teutonic peoples. [Sidenote: Nationalism and Teutonism] The revolt from Rome was in the interests of the state church, and also of Germanic culture. The break-up of the Roman church at the hands of the Northern peoples is strikingly like the break-up of the Roman Empire under pressure from their ancestors. Indeed, the limits of the Roman church practically coincided with the boundaries of the Empire. The apparent exception of England proves the rule, for in Britain the Roman civilization was swept away by the German invasions of the fifth and following centuries.

That the Reformation strengthened the state was inevitable, for there was no practical alternative to putting the final authority in spiritual matters, after the pope had been ejected, into the hands of the civil government. Congregationalism was tried and failed as tending to anarchy. But how little the Reformation was really responsible for the new despotism and the divine right of kings, is clear from a comparison with {748} the Greek church and the Turkish Empire. In both, the same forces which produced the state churches of Western Europe operated in the same way. Selim I, a bigoted Sunnite, after putting down the Shi'ite heresy, induced the last caliph of the Abbasid dynasty to surrender the sword and mantle of the prophet; thereafter he and his successors were caliphs as well as sultans. In Russia Ivan the Terrible made himself, in 1547, head of the national church.

Protestantism also harmonized with the capitalistic revolution in that its ethics are, far more than those of Catholicism, oriented by a reference to this world. The old monastic ideal of celibacy, solitude, mortification of the flesh, prayer and meditation, melted under the sun of a new prosperity. In its light men began to realize the ethical value of this life, of marriage, of children, of daily labor and of success and prosperity. It was just in this work that Protestantism came to see its chance of serving God and one's neighbor best. The man at the plough, the maid with the broom, said Luther, are doing God better service than does the praying, self-tormenting monk.

Moreover, the accentuation of the virtues of thrift and industry, which made capitalism and Calvinism allies, but reflected the standards natural to the bourgeois class. It was by the might of the merchants and their money that the Reformation triumphed; conversely they benefited both by the spoils of the church and by the abolition of a privileged class. Luther stated that there was no difference between priest and layman; some men were called to preach, others to make shoes, but--and this is his own illustration--the one vocation is no more spiritual than the other. No longer necessary as a mediator and dispenser of sacramental grace, the Protestant clergyman sank inevitably to the same level as his neighbors.

{749} [Sidenote: Intellectual aspect]

(3) In its relation to the Renaissance and to modern thought the Reformation solved, in its way, two problems, or one problem, that of authority, in two forms. Though anything but consciously rational in their purpose, the innovating leaders did assert, at least for themselves, the right of private judgment. Appealing from indulgence-seller to pope, from pope to council, from council to the Bible and (in Luther's own words) from the Bible to Christ, [Sidenote: Individualism] the Reformers finally came to their own conscience as the supreme court. Trying to deny to others the very rights they had fought to secure for themselves, yet their example operated more powerfully than their arguments, even when these were made of ropes and of thumb-screws. The delicate balance of faith was overthrown and it was put into a condition of unstable equilibrium; the avalanche, started by ever so gentle a push, swept onward until it buried the men who tried to stop it half way. Dogma slowly narrowing down from precedent to precedent had its logical, though unintended, outcome in complete religious autonomy, yes, in infidelity and skepticism.

Protestantism has been represented now as the ally, now as the enemy of humanism. Consciously it was neither. Rather, it was the vulgarization of the Renaissance; it transformed, adapted, and popularized many of the ideas originated by its rival. It is easy to see now that the future lay rather outside of both churches than in either of them, if we look only for direct descent. Columbus burst the bounds of the world, Copernicus those of the universe; Luther only broke his vows. But the point is that the repudiation of religious vows was the hardest to do at that time, a feat infinitely more impressive to the masses than either of the former. It was just here that the religious movement became a great solvent of conservatism; it made the masses think, passionately if not {750} deeply, on their own beliefs. It broke the cake of custom and made way for greater emancipations than its own. It was the logic of events that, whereas the Renaissance gave freedom of thought to the cultivated few, the Reformation finally resulted in tolerance for the masses. Logically also, even while it feared and hated philosophy in the great thinkers and scientists, it advocated education, up to a certain point, for the masses.

In summary, if the Reformation is judged with historical imagination, it docs not appear to be primarily a reaction. That it should be such is both a priori improbable and unsupported by the facts. The Reformation did not give our answer to the many problems it was called upon to face; nevertheless it gave the solution demanded and accepted by the time, and therefore historically the valid solution. With all its limitations it was, fundamentally, a step forward and not the return to an earlier standpoint, either to that of primitive Christianity, as the Reformers themselves claimed, or to the dark ages, as has been latterly asserted.

S. Reinach: Cultes, Mythes et Religions, iv, 467.

{751}

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRELIMINARY

1. UNPUBLISHED SOURCES.

The amount of important unpublished documents on the Reformation, though still large, is much smaller than that of printed sources, and the value of these manuscripts is less than that of those which have been published. It is no purpose of this bibliography to furnish a guide to archives.

Though the quantity of unpublished material that I have used has been small, it has proved unexpectedly rich. In order to avoid repetition in each following chapter, I will here summarize manuscript material used (most of it for the first time), which is either still unpublished or is in course of publication by myself. See Luther's Correspondence, transl. and ed. by Preserved Smith and C. M. Jacobs, 1913 ff; English Historical Review, July 1919; Scottish Historical Review, Jan. 1919; Harvard Theological Review, April 1919; The N. Y. Nation, various dates 1919.

From the Bodleian Library, I have secured a copy of an unpublished letter and other fragments of Luther, press mark, Montagu d. 20, fol. 225, and Auct. Z. ii, 2.

From the British Museum I have had diplomatic correspondence of Robert Barnes, Cotton MSS., Vitellius B XXI, foil. 120 ff.; a letter of Albinianus Tretius to Luther, Add. MS. 19, 959, fol. 4b ff; and a portion of John Foxe's Collection of Letters and Papers, Harleian MS 419, fol. 125.

From the Pennsylvania Historical Society, Philadelphia, collection of autographs made by Ferdinand J. Dreer, unpublished and hitherto unused letters of Erasmus, James VI of Scotland (2), Leo X, Hedio, Farel to Calvin, Forster, Melanchthon, Charles V, Albrecht of Mansfeld, Henry VIII, Francis I (3), Catherine de' Medici, Grynaeus, Viglius van Zuichem, Alphonso d'Este, Philip Marnix, Camden, Tasso, Machiavelli, Pius IV, Vassari, Borromeo, Alesandro Ottavio de' Medici (afterwards Leo XI), Clement VIII, Sarpi, Emperor Ferdinand, William of Nassau (1559), Maximilian III, Paul Eber (2), Rudolph II, Henry III, Philip II, Emanuel Philibert, Henry IV, Scaliger, Mary Queen of Scots, Robert Dudley (Leicester), Filippo Strozzi, and others.

From Wellesley College a patent of Charles V., dated Worms, March 6, 1521, granting mining rights to the Count of Belalcazar. Unpublished.

Prom the American Hispanic Society of New York unpublished letter of Henry IV of France to Du Font, on his conversion, and letter of Henry VII of England to Ferdinand of Aragon.

2. GENERAL WORKS

Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1910-1. (Many valuable articles of a thoroughly scientific character).

The New International Encyclopaedia, 1915f. (Equally valuable).

Realencyklopaedie fuer protestantische Theologie und Kirche. 24 vols. Leipzig. 1896-1913. (Indispensable to the student of Church History; The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religions Knowledge, 12 vols., 1908 ff, though in part based on this, is far less valuable for the present subject).

Wetzer und Welte: Kirchenlexikon oder Encyclopaedie der katholischen Theologie und ihrer Huelfswissenschaften. Zweite Auflage von J. Card. Hergenroether und F. Kaulen. Freiburg im Breisgau. 1880-1901. 12 vols. (Valuable).

Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, hg. von H. Gunkel, O. Scheel, F. M. Schiele. 5 vols. 1909-13.

The Cambridge Modern History, planned by Lord Acton, edited by A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero, Stanley Leathes. London and New York. 1902 ff. Vol. 1. The Renaissance. 1902. Vol. 2. The Reformation. 1904. Vol. 3. The Wars of Religion. 1905. Vol. 13. Tables and Index. 1911. Vol. 14. Maps. 1912. (A standard co-operative work, with full bibliographies).

Weltgeschichte, hg.v.J. von Pflugk-Harttung: Das Religioese Zeitalter, 1500-1650. Berlin. 1907. (A co-operative work, written by masters of their subjects in popular style. Profusely illustrated).

E. Lavisse et A. Rambaud: Histoire generale du IVe siecle a nos jours. Tome IV Renaissance et reforme, les nouveaux mondes 1492-1559. 1894. Tome V. Les guerres de religion 1559-1648. 1895.

R. L. Poole: Historical Atlas of Modern Europe. 1902.

W. R. Shepherd: Historical Atlas. 1911.

Ramsay Muir: Hammond's New Historical Atlas for Students. 1914.

A list of general histories of the Reformation will be found in the bibliography to the last chapter.

An excellent introduction to the bibliography of the public documents of all countries will be found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, s.v. "Record."